For the study, researchers examined information from a Veterans Health Administration database, spanning the fiscal years of 1999 to 2010. The rates of 180-day mortality in 7,877 Parkinson’s patients prescribed antipsychotic drugs were compared with a control group of equal size consisting of Parkinson’s patients who were not given antipsychotic medication. Researchers found that these medicines were associated with more than twice the hazard ratio of death when compared with nonuse.
The study is limited in its understanding of the direct link between these medications and higher mortality in Parkinson’s patients. “In this study we looked at the dataset for clues…but the most common cause of death listed was ‘Parkinson’s disease’ — so there really wasn’t anything that pointed to a specific cause or mechanism,” senior author Daniel Weintraub, MD, associate professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and a fellow in Penn’s Institute on Aging, said in News Medical.
As much as 60 percent of Parkinson’s patients experience psychosis at some point. The study’s findings suggest proceeding with caution when prescribing an antipsychotic medication to someone afflicted with Parkinson’s. The authors also suggest that future studies should inspect the role of nonpharmacological psychosis treatments in Parkinson’s patients.
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